Caught In A Moment

The Zombie

Ganapathy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:15:13 +0000

There she lay, writhing and squirming
peeking into the world, through the birth canal,
estranged from reality by the umbilical cord
still feeling close to god,
another creation of the mighty lord,
the Human Zombie.

When the cord is cut, breaking roots with the divine
she is slapped into this ersatz world,
she bursts into a squeal of pain.

Yet another faceless mullion,
added to the teeming trillions,
yet another zygote seeking a zoar in the world of the zombie.

Amid the howl of pain,
and incessant spattering of blinding rain,
tears of joy from the mother divine,
she starts breathing
heaving in lungful of listless air through her nascent nose,
…..There she lay, writhing and squirming,
taking in the world , the world of the zombie.

She is now a bundle of joy,
gurgling and squealing,
lying next to her mother,
a faceless warrior, embarking on a battle with time.

And the bombs are still exploding,
and the bullets are still firing,
and the rivers of blood are still flowing,
this is the world of the zombies.

Thousands of inconsolable mothers,
moony eyes and uncontrollable sorrow,
even their eyes refusing to cry,
with their tear ducts gone dry.

Booming machine gun fire,
filling this world with despair,
zombie armies making humans rare,
wearing poplins of blood,
in this battle of gore,even
brothers are prestidigitator of yore.

Amid this mindless rubble of senseless schism,
grows the handsome schizanthous,
In this senseless void filled with battery of guns,
grows the lonely rose,
struggling to spread its fragrance across its thorny hosts.

She’s the glowing spark of incandescence,
in this world of decadence,
born to a struggling mother,
in the middle of the me lee of the battlefield.

She’s the ardent hope,
brought into this world with millions more
fragrant roses with prodigious scope,
for all embattled, beleaguered humans,
fighting alike, hordes of zombies and vagaries of time.
struggling in this subliminal world,
in their quest to quell,
the onslaught of the Zombies.

Green Glasses

Ganapathy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 06:12:33 +0000

This was a poem i had written on a particularly bright morning, which was preceded by a very bad day for me in office, this poem kind of mirrors the awe i was feeling towards the world on that day and its called the Green Glasses… read on…

The world doesn’t seem all the same today,
there is a warmth that is there,
that was missing before,
there is a light that is there, that was never seen before,
there’s a spring in everybody’s steps,
there’s an extra chirp in the bird’s call.
Is it just me, or has the world changed overnight.

Yesterday friends were getting ready for a fight,
today they are canoeing together in the rivers of light,
tears don’t fill every eye I watch,
a frown doesn’t warp every brow that catches my sight…
it just leaves me wondering,
is it just me, or has the world changed overnight?

Yesterday,
sad were my thoughts,
dark were my dreams and disturbed was my sleep,
but today,
my whole world got brightened, like the shining sun filling up a bubbling valley,
I feel like am watching the world through green glasses,
Squeaky and clean, shorn of all the malaises,

It just leaves me wondering,
is it just me, or has the world changed overnight…….

The Silent Crusade

Ganapathy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:48:05 +0000

The day at office went on as tormenting as ever. I was looking for a chance to break free, and I decided I was going to be home by at least 10:00 PM that day. Things thankfully went as planned and I checked in the last piece of code that I’d written. I called up the transport desk to confirm if the cab I’d requested for had arrived, and as is usually the case they said it was on its way and should be in anytime now. But unfortunately (and I should again add as is usually the case) the cab wasn’t in anytime sooner at all. In fact the transport desk told me the cab is actually on its way and should be here in another 10 minutes time leaving me wondering what they meant by “on the way”. The 10 minutes extended to a one hour ten minutes and I had lost all the patience I had in reserve. After blasting the hapless transport desk coordinator for all he’s worth and a few angry escalation mails later, the cab finally arrived. But the driver just called up and requested the coordinator to give him another ten minutes because he had wanted to have his dinner. After another torturous ten minutes, the driver of the cab was back, and I could start off finally. But it was then that I noticed that the driver was about my age, probably a little younger, and he definitely looked like he could do with some sleep. I started chatting up with him and I learnt that he’s also a graduate from rural college and had come into the city in search of a decent profession. He said he was trying to maximize his earnings by staying up all night and day to be able to support his large joint family back in his village. He was driving continuously for the past 3 days, only managing to catch a few hours of sleep in the wee hours of the day. He said he gets 100 rupees extra for driving people like me home late into the night. That was when I started thinking about the path that I had taken so far, which wasn’t all that different from the driver’s, except for mine being a lot less arduous route than his. And I end up in a software firm and earning a salary that is astronomical for all the other working members of the society, and still am unsatisfied and I start cribbing about everything that works and everything else that doesn’t work in my life. And my hapless friends and acquaintances are subjected to this constant barrage of crib, which I as one would imagine get back from my peers in kind, because they are no different from me. But I was comparing myself with the driver of the vehicle, he was working 20 hours a day, traveling mind boggling distances, doing a job not even remotely related to his area of study in college, getting paid a pittance, yet he’s happy with himself and the world. He’s got a plan for himself. He wants to buy a car for himself as starters and start running a one man travel agency. Once his travel business is earning him enough profits, he wants to set up schools in his village and he wants everybody in the village to have the same opportunities that the city kids are having today. And he’s patiently waiting for his bank balance to afford him a head-start into his dream. When I arrived at my house, I was still struck for words, I just said thank you, not knowing whether the thank you was for the ride back home, or for opening my eye and showing me the world in all its vivid colors.

People like him are the modern day warriors, the silent crusaders, who still cling onto their ideals despite all the cudgels that the world throws at them and have taken a decision to bring about a change. This reminds me a lot about the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, If, the famous last four lines of the poem,

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute,

With sixty-seconds worth of distance run –

Yours is earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a man my son.”

Here are people who fill every unforgiving minute with Sixty Five seconds of distance run and care not what the minute gives them back, they just do it because they want to bring a change to this world. I salute the driver who proved how futile my everyday pursuance was and how much a change in perspective is necessary. And silently I join the ranks of the Silent Crusaders and here I vow to work towards a change… will ye my readers join me in this struggle for a better tomorrow for our struggling masses?

A trip to the realm of clouds

Ganapathy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:05:13 +0000

Trip to the realm of the clouds

It had come to us as a shocker, especially after the 14 hour drive that we had taken to reach Manali from Shimla, only Himachal Pradesh vehicles are allowed free entry into the town, the other vehicles have to pay a toll according to a tab prescribed (which in our case was Rs 300 since we were driving a Qualis). We paid out the prescribed amount and finally managed an entry into the renowned town by the side of the noisy Beas river which we had been following upriver this long. Crossing through the exceptionally crowded market street(s) we finally managed to locate the hotel where we had registered through a travel web site. Reaching there I received an even bigger shock, this is just a hotel of the same name, but not the hotel where we had registered. That hotel of ours unfortunately happens to be in Buntar, in the Kulu Valley, a cool 60 kilometers from where we were right now (infact we had crossed this little town to reach Manali). Finally due to the goodness of this hotel-of-the-same-name-but-not-the-hotel-where-we-have-registration we managed to get a booking and finally had a sack to rest on and a roof above our heads. The next morning we were preparing to drive up the highest motor-able road in the planet, the Leh Highway which takes us to the Rohtang Pass which at 13,000 feet is the highest point in this road. But this little river-side town of Manali seemed to have more surprises for us, our Delhi registered vehicle was not permitted to go to Rohtang Pass. We would need to take a Himachal registered vehicles, and the best part was that this law was passed only a few days before we stepped into Himachal, talk about timing!!

After all these initial glitches we set off with a well endowed (read Himachal registered) four wheel drive SUV on a journey that would take us to the realm of the clouds. From the description that my family gave me I had formed up a picture of a mystical Shangri-La in my mind and the place finally turned out to be none-the-less. The drive was initially annoying with no semblance of a road and a whole lot of potholes assembled together to make road, but the soothing scenery surrounding us made up for it. I could easily make out the change in the flora and fauna as the altitude started increasing. We had started out with the tall deodars of the Shivaliks, with bird cries and the sound of the river filling the air. This was soon replaced by the lush green coniferous forests, emerald meadows dotted with wild horses and sheep climbing up insanely sloping grasslands. But as the altitude increased further this lush landscape was replaced by the dry tundra vegetation, the land covered up with ice and offering breath taking views of snow capped, wind torn, sun burnt peaks of the upper reaches of the Himalayas. Our car was precariously perched on a road just half-a-car wide and traveling with melting ice on one side and a 12,000 feet drop into the roaring Beas on the other side. And climbing a bit further we reached what could probably be the world’s highest traffic jam. The whole area was filled with cars jostling for space, there apparently was a land-slide further in the road and was closed for repairs by the BRO (Border Roads Organization). This picture instantly reminded me of a picture of the Karakoram Highway, the lifeline between China and Northern Areas of Pakistan. I got a chance to get out of the vehicle and stretch my legs and dissolve myself in the breathtaking grandeur of the Himalayas. Surrounding me was a bizarre (at least to the eyes of a coastal dweller like me) lunar landscape, completely shorn of vegetation, filled with snow and surrounded by golden peaks touching the sky.

Finally with the land-slide having been cleared by the BRO and the clouds given away providing a clear view of the where we were going, we started driving further and after another 2 hours of travel reached the famed Rohtang Pass. Here was a glacier which was the source for the roaring Beas River. At first sight I had to admit looking at the way the whole place was maintained I was completely let down. The whole place was filled with so many people that the pass’s lower reaches lost its sheen completely. But we parked the car, zipped our parkas further up the neck and started climbing higher up the slope to the upper reaches. We climbed up about 150 feet and reached the place where the famed glacier was starting out from a sheer 90 degree climb which takes one to the very peak of this majestic mountain and there was the Shangri-La I was searching for.

The place was completely shorn of people maybe because nobody dared to or thought of climbing this high (I don’t think it’s all that advisable for the uninitiated) and was glistening in its pristine beauty. Standing there on that wind swept icy peak, feeling the pressure in the lungs due to lessened oxygen levels, I realized that me a mere human being is a nobody in this endless universe. I was but a puny speck on this massive mountain. We were so completely overwhelmed by the beauty of the place that we just sat down right there on the glacier, unmindful of the spine bending cold, closed our eyes and looked within oneself. Those peaks were definitely my Shangri-La, because it was on those peaks that I reached within me and for the first time in my life, saw, least of all understood the meaning of the word ‘Me’ and sheer insignificance of it in this immense infinity of the Universe.